[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 25 (Tuesday, February 7, 2023)] [Senate] [Pages S250-S251] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] Debt Ceiling Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, as my colleague from Texas said, people are looking forward to hearing what the President will say and what he will not say tonight. As I have been home over the weekend, one of the things I have heard from Tennesseans about is the out-of-control Federal spending. Now, we know what the Democrats have done in plussing up the budget for the last couple of years, but one number kind of stuck with me, and it is about $3.6 trillion--that is taxpayer dollars--that has been spent on Democratic wish-list items. A lot of this is the Green New Deal. A lot of this is the reckless spending agenda they are pushing. Now, they forced through, in 2021, $1.85 trillion in spending. Then they came back around, and they wanted to talk about inflation. Joe Biden had 1.4 percent inflation when he took office, and because of this out-of-control spending and spending more and more and more and hundreds of billions of dollars, we saw inflation in June of 2022 hit 9.1 percent. People are frustrated about this. But one of the things that got Tennesseans was the fact that this President didn't say: Well, it is because we put all this money-- Federal spending--your dollars--we are putting these back out there. No, he blamed Vladimir Putin. It was Putin's fault. To Tennesseans, this was outrageous. It was the ``go blame somebody else'' game. The Biden administration's neglect of the economy and their complete disregard for the destructive effects of their spending is something that has caught the attention of Tennesseans. This term for this President wasn't even halfway over, and already his policies are making everyday life too expensive to afford. To be clear, Tennesseans talk to me about being worried about the basics of life: food security, food for the table, clothes for the kids, gas for the car. They feel like this agenda, this set of priorities that this administration has, is just peeling away a lot of their life, their living, their enjoyment, because there is no extra money left over. It is all going into necessities. They are struggling to manage 6.5 percent inflation. They are looking at the cost of food that is up 13 percent from where it was a year ago. Keeping the heat on in this cold winter is 15 percent more. And it is the same story when you talk about school supplies and when you talk about clothes for the kids. It is the same story here in Washington, where it seems that Joe Biden and this administration and the Democrats are once again poised and ready to spend more money. They are wanting to raise the debt ceiling without even a conversation about spending cuts. To Tennesseans, that is outrageous. Now, my Democratic colleagues have spent a lot of time talking about what will happen if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, and I don't think anyone here denies that the country has some serious discussions that need to be had. But I would ask my colleagues to remember that raising the debt ceiling is not a green light to keep spending money until we crash into another debt ceiling. Tennesseans understand this. They spent 2 years cutting costs because common sense told them that you just can't keep spending with reckless abandon, and they want to know why the Democrats in Washington don't get this. Yes, indeed, everybody spends too much up here; but why are my Democratic colleagues unwilling to talk about making any cuts? Now there are some things that we could do to start this process. There are three bills that I file every single year. When the Presiding Officer and I were across the dome in the House, I would file these bills every single year, because it is common sense. They would make a 1-percent or a 2-percent or a 5-percent across-the-board spending cut. Every Federal Agency ought to be able to do that. The American people do that. Making that one penny out of a dollar reduction in spending would save us money. There again, you do this in the discretionary spending to get things rolling. Start it there--a penny in a dollar. How about two pennies in a dollar? If you take a penny out of a dollar, that would save you $5.2 billion. If you did [[Page S251]] that just in discretionary--didn't do it in the military, didn't do it in mandatory spending--just discretionary--2 cents out of the dollar, then you are going to get more than $10 billion in savings. These are small, little steps. But, you know what? In the end, if you do that, if you cut a nickel out, it saves $26 billion. Do it every year. Do it so we are not wasting taxpayers' money. This is not government money. It is not your money. It is not my money. It is not the money of this Chamber or the House. It is the money of the people of this country, and we are charged with spending that carefully, accountably, and transparently to the people. Tennesseans cannot take and they will not accept another year of this reckless spending. They are demanding change, and this is the barest minimum of what they would accept--tiny little cuts like that, just in the right direction, and then holding to it. Don't come back in 2 years and say: We have to raise the debt. They want to see some structural change. Now, unfortunately, the President has said that he has no plans to negotiate his spending levels. It will be interesting to see what he has to say about this tonight, because to Tennesseans, it is almost, unfortunately--somebody said this weekend--it is laughable. It is shameful that he does not want to negotiate, that he is not going to talk about spending less, that he only wants to talk about spending more. Senate Democrats cannot keep putting off this debate in order to save the President's failed agenda. Our job is not to serve the White House. It is to serve the American people. And they are saying: Do something about the wasteful, out-of-control spending. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________